Bulger's certain fate a small price to pay

The verdict in the murder and racketeering trial of mobster James Whitey Bulger was never in doubt, even if it did take jurors nearly five days to render their decision.

The only news would have been if somehow he had been able to beat the rap and dodge justice one more time.

Given his age, virtually any one of the 32 counts for which he was charged would have guaranteed imprisonment for the rest of his life.

This was all about a measure of closure for the families of the people he killed or had killed, and the many decent members of law enforcement who spent a good part of their careers trying to ensure that he would pay for his heinous acts.

One such person is retired state police detective Robert Long, the former Tewksbury resident who spent decades believing the surveillance he helped conduct on James "Whitey" Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang never would be validated.

Along with the satisfaction he felt in the verdicts that found Bulger had a role in 11 murders, he, too, realized this was mainly for the families of Bulger's victims, who had waited so long for this day to come.

And while a measure of solace -- and revenge -- was no doubt gained, it still can't erase the memories of their loved ones' violent deaths.

Throughout this trial, all the layers of the "Whitey" mystique were peeled away, and he was laid bare for what he truly is.

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No South Boston version of Robin Hood who kept drugs out of his beloved neighborhood, but a calculating, homicidal thug who valued life about as much as a discarded lottery scratch ticket.

It seems like everyone he touched paid for that association in one way or another -- even his own siblings.

John Bulger, a former clerk magistrate, had to forfeit his $65,000-a-year state pension because he felt compelled to lie to grand juries investigating his brother's disappearance.

Billy Bulger, the former state Senate president, was forced out of the UMass Amherst presidency for refusing to lend any assistance in the search for his fugitive brother.

He, though, got the last laugh when a court verdict allowed him to pad his already hefty pension to more than $200,000.

Whitey obviously had no illusions about his fate once he was apprehended at that Santa Monica apartment complex some two years ago.

But he was delusional enough to believe his crimes would be viewed through the prism of the alleged immunity he received from his FBI handlers, most notably John Connolly.

And of course that will be the basis of his fruitless appeal.

And now we must wait three months for his sentencing, which we hope will be accompanied by some heartfelt and withering victim-impact statements.

It's appropriate that Whitey received his just due inside the John Joseph Moakley federal courthouse, just a stone's throw from where his insidious life of crime all began.

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